Page:Comey-Interview-12-7-18-Redacted.pdf/175

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decision. Now, what I maybe should have done was say, no, back to you Loretta and Sally, but that felt cowardly to me at the time. And if I were to live life over again, I might have marched across the street and said, hey, you folks see it differently than I and why, instead of the way I approached it. But I gave them the chance and they said, don't need to talk to you.

Ms. Jackson Lee. So we look at good practices, can we leave it on the point that, yes, march across the street and you sit down as a group and make the final decision? Would that have been, you know, without saying it was cowardly, without saying they didn't want to do it, but that's sort of DOJ, because you were having something so much so at a heightened level that that would have been the better practice?

Mr. Comey. Maybe, but I actually don't want to -- I really like those two people. I don't let them too much off the hook. They're the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General of the United States for heaven's sakes. They know that I think I have to do this thing, so call me up and talk to me about it, give me your views of it, you're my boss. But instead, they communicate back saying over to you, Jim.

So I'm not sure I want to take all the fault for that. I agree with you. I think the best practice would have been the three of us to sit down and talk it through.

Ms. Jackson Lee. Okay. I will -- the point behind that was that maybe the October 5th did not need to be announced only